TN3 Gallery is a professional and very flexible jQuery image gallery plugin for displaying and rotating a collection of images in various ways.

It works cross-browser (including mobile), has multiple transition effects, can show captions and present the thumbnails horizontally or vertically.

The plugin can automatically generate these thumbnails with or without resizing them on the server-side (with the help of a PHP file) and enable users to browse the gallery by clicking to these thumbnails.

Thumbnails are not the only way to view the images, there are also prev-next buttons, mouse-wheel + keyboard support, auto-slideshow and, optionally, bullet-type-of-navigation can be used rather than thumbnails.

A lovely feature is the ability to present multiple albums with each album having its own thumbnail and caption to help users better understand "what is inside".

TN3 Gallery can use XML as the data source which is great for integrating the gallery with 3rd party software like CMS applications.

For maximum customization, the API comes to the aid in every point with functions to change everything.

There are also many other features like Flickr integration, skinning, fullscreen display, support for Cufon or @font-face and more.

It comes in 3 flavors;

• Lite: with limited features and free
• Pro: with all the features and licenses to a single site
• Multi-Site: with all the features and licenses to unlimited sites

How to join the giveaway?

In order to win one of the 5 Pro Licenses, just comment to this post and winners will be selected on 20 June 2011 (1 week later) with the query below:

SELECT * FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_post_id=2300 AND comment_approved=1 AND comment_type='' GROUP BY comment_author_email ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 5

Good luck!

CU3OX is a free software (for Windows or Mac OS) that enables you to create beautiful and 3D Flash image sliders.

It has support for multiple transition effects like cubic, bounce or elastic where each of them can be customized with:

• the number of pieces
• tween type
• z-distance
• distance
• time
• delay and more

Besides adding images locally, it can get them from Flickr or PhotoBucket and upload with the built-in FTP engine.

Once creating the slider is completed, the software simply generates the code to be inserted inside the web page.

In order to edit the gallery, it is not required to use CU3OX again, updating XML files will be enough.

The output of the software is very similar to CU3ER, the popular 3D Flash image slider where the main difference is "this being a desktop version".

Piecemaker is a free and open source Flash image slider that displays images with 3D slice effects.

It can be completely configured from a XML file like setting the tween type, distance, time, delay, etc. and doesn't require working with the .FLA source file.

The slider shows images almost instantly due to the external image loading feature and supports JPG, GIF, PNG formats.

Once hovered, it displays prev-next buttons and a play/pause option for easier browsing.

Images are defined inside the XML file and a description text for each of them can be mentioned (including links).

It is also possible to customize the styles of these descriptions via CSS.

Piecemaker can be downloaded from Activetuts+, a high-quality Flash tutorials community, which also shares the detailed story of the slider.

SlickBoard is a pretty different tool, built by the developers of XML/SWF Charts, for creating:

• unlimited graphics
• attractive interface elements (buttons, menus, tabs, drawers, etc.), animated slideshows
• live dashboards (dials, gauges, ticker tapes, etc.)
• interactive presentations (drag, dock, etc.)
• dynamic web pages
• & more..

It works by describing the output with XML & passing it to the SlickBoard's SWF file, that's all.

The tool offers unlimited output variations with the flexibility & built-in features it has (like rotating/sliding/minimizing objects, form/menu/tab controls, advanced drawing capabilities, etc.).

Using JavaScript, it is possible to load HTML, XML or JSON data with XMLHttpRequest.

However cross-domain JavaScript requests (reaching remote pages) are not possible due to browser security limitations except JSONP-formatted JSON data.

Simple PHP Proxy is a PHP script which aims to fill this gap by creating a layer between your JavaScript code and the remote domain to get data in HTML, XML or JSON formats.

Some features of Simple PHP Proxy:

• requested URLs can be white-listed & validated against a regex.
• optionally forward client cookies / SID to the remote server.
• optionally forward configurable User Agent to the remote server.
• requests can use either GET or POST request methods.
• remote data can be delivered as-is with all remote headers intact.
• remote data can be wrapped in a JSON/P structure that includes status codes & remote headers.
• if using JSON/P & remote data is valid JSON, it will be merged into the resulting data object.

There is also a demo which you can request any URL.

When we hear about a Flash CMS, there is mostly a prejudice that it may not be that functional.

FlashMoto CMS is a totally different one which is quite impressive & really works for managing Flash-based websites.

With the help of a good-looking & easy-to-use interface, a website is controlled just like a standard CMS but with the extras that Flash offers.

What does it offer in a snapshot?

Using FlashMoto CMS, it is possible to:

• add unlimited number of pages, update or delete them
• manage your website menu (with sub-menus)
• create image galleries & add-remove images to them
• create forms
• upload videos & music
• insert shapes or other Flash files

The content is created using a WYSIWYG editor. There is a media library where you can upload images, video or SWF files & use them in any part of the website with a few clicks.

It has a built-in gallery component for displaying a list of images and/or videos. This feature is specially useful for designers, photographers or anyone willing to present a portfolio.

Adding a standalone background music or embedding videos from popular services like Youtube, Vimeo is also a breeze.

Similar to HTML websites, websites created with FlashMoto CMS are indexable by search engines & every page has their own URLs + titles.

It also allows you to define the Google Analytics details & statistics of the website will be tracked (every page will tracked even it is a Flash website).

Read the rest of this entry »

jParse is a jQuery plugin for parsing XML that was fetched with the jQuery .ajax method.

It can select the value of any XML node or a node's parameter & can ouput a totally customized HTML.

The plugin is very flexible & offers features like:

• running callback functions before it starts & after it finishes
• limitting the number of <items> to be processed
• excluding XML nodes with certain words, numbers or symbols
• output the number of <item>'s in a feed anywhere in your document

As jQuery .ajax method does not allow cross domain Ajax requests, the XML must be on the same domain.

To see how easy it is to parse a XML file with jParse, check the demo.

ColorSuckr is a free online service which can extract colors from an image & generate color schemes.

It can be used in 3 ways:

• by mentioning the URL of the image
• via a bookmarklet
• or a Firefox add-on

Once the color schemes are ready, they can be downloaded as Adobe Swatch (.ASE) files or more schemes can be listed from COLOURlovers for any selected color.

ColorSuckr also offers the results in RSS, JSON & XML formats which makes an integration with any application possible.

XML Banner Rotator is a free Flash component to display rotating images with style.

It is highly customizable via a XML file & comes with 35+ options including the masking size and speed.

The position of the elements on the screen, number of images & colors can all be controlled.

Besides any HTML page, XML Banner Rotator can be inserted into any FLA file too.

P.S. Download requires free membership.

Last week, a post at WRD had announced the giveaway of 3 Monoslideshow licenses.

The winners of this amazing Flash image-video viewer has been selected and can be found at the bottom of the post.

To Remind:

Monoslideshow is a flexible XML-driven Flash image & video viewer for easily displaying media on any website with style.

It comes with 500+ options that makes the viewer to fit into every design & usage type.

The viewer handles large collections easily with the album-browsing support.

It can be controlled via JavaScript + AS3 APIs and has RSS support which makes it possible to create image slideshows from Flickr, etc.

The Winners:

The winners of this great application are:

• Eric Peacock (comment #66084)
• vedat (comment #65951)
• @digitman (Twitter)

Congratulations to the winners & thanks to everyone for contributing.